With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story available for purchase beginning today, we’re circling back to some of the 2017 LEGO Star Wars sets we haven’t reviewed yet, starting with 75172 Y-wing Starfighter. This is the fifth minifig-scale Y-wing that LEGO has released since 1999 and the largest at 691 pieces.
75172 Y-wing Starfighter depicts a Blue Squadron Y-wing featured during the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One, with five minifigures. The set retails for $59.99.
The build
The Y-wing, its accessories, and the minifigs come in 5 numbered bags, with a 100-page booklet spanning 131 steps, and a large sticker sheet with eight stickers.
The first bag includes pieces for the weapon carrier along with Moroff the mercenary and Admiral Raddus. The carrier has a crane and carries extra ammo for both the spring-loaded darts and the torpedoes. While the vehicle a fun little accessory to the main vehicle, there’s not much that’s interesting in the build of the weapon carrier, so let’s move on.
The second bag includes the parts for the central core of the Y-wing, along with the Y-wing pilot and astromech droid. Like most LEGO vehicles of any size, the core includes Technic beams for sturdiness. A vehicle chassis is nicely used as the base for the astromech slot. The rear of the body has a large opening underneath, with an intriguing Technic mechanism attached to a crank, the purpose of which will be revealed in due time (or on the box cover, as the case may be). The back of the body has some excellent SNOT detailing and even a bit of half-stud offset.
Bag 3 builds most of the Y-wing’s cockpit, up to the canopy. Hinge plates connect the side panels to the underlying hull, held firmly in place by one of the most unique connections I’ve ever encountered in an official LEGO set — a pair of LEGO skeleton arms lock the side panels to 1×1 bricks with bar attachments. It’s almost a shame that a bunch of wedge plates cover up this innovative build solution.
The fourth bag completes the cockpit and adds pylons, landing gear, and greebles to the starfighter’s core from bag 1. Replicating the look of exposed conduits and wiring, bars attach to all the clips sticking out every which way from the vehicle’s body, similar to the detailing introduced on the UCS Y-wing from 2004 (and included on most subsequent versions). The cockpit is built from some lovely sand blue, together with trans-gray. The canopy is fully printed.
The fifth and final bag includes the pieces for the ion jet engine nacelles, as well as a stormtrooper minifigure. The left and right nacelles are identical, and each one includes four identical support pylons, for a total of eight — it’s the only part of the build that begins to feel slightly repetitive, but the realistic look of the finished model is worth the repetition.
The finished model
Despite its similarities to 9495 Gold Leader’s Y-wing, this new Y-wing represents a substantial improvement, from the larger forward laser cannons to the open thrust vectrals. The greebling is much more detailed, with realistic coloring that replaces more white with light gray.
The swiveling ion cannon on the top of the cockpit is arguably a nice play feature (and with a friction pin it doesn’t flop around when you swoosh the Y-wing around). But this Y-wing includes one of my favorite play features in a LEGO set of the last year or two. That mysterious Technic mechanism I mentioned from the first bag turns out to be a bomb chute that can accommodate two proton bombs. By turning the crank on the rear of the fuselage, the bombs fall through the opening on the underside of the starfighter.
This is an excellent, sturdy starfighter worthy of not just Rogue One but A New Hope and the Classic Trilogy overall.
The minifigs
Nearly every previous LEGO Y-wing has included Dutch Vander as the pilot, along with an assortment of other characters. Even though Dutch does lead Gold Squadron against the shield gate during the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One, it’s great to get a Y-wing pilot who isn’t Dutch. The Blue Squadron pilot wears a dark blue flight suit, with a dual-sided head showing alternating excited and terrified expressions.
Admiral Raddus leads the Rebel fleet into battle aboard his Mon Calamari starcruiser the Profundity. Raddus apparently hails from the colder northern reaches of Mon Cala, as shown by his darker pigmentation. He has a dark gray Mon Calamari head (the same mold as Admiral Ackbar and his officers in previous LEGO sets) with multi-colored printing, including mottling on his neck.
Moroff is a member of Saw Gerrera’s band and appears during the street battle on Jedha — he does not participate in the Battle of Scarif. Nevertheless, this is a great minifig with detailed leg printing, a unique head/torso piece, and a cool brick-built backpack to go with his heavy minigun-style rotary blaster cannon.
R3-S1 is an astromech with female programming, and droid pool on Yavin IV. She has a clear dome, which has unique printing in her LEGO incarnation, complimented by a dark silver body.
The stormtrooper is a stormtrooper. You’ve seen stormtroopers before. The inclusion of the stormtrooper frankly feels a bit like filler…
Conclusions & recommendation
This is a stellar Y-wing — easily the best redesigned version released since the rather awful original packaged with Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced in 1999, and it might even rise to my favorite LEGO Star Wars set from Rogue One so far.
With excellent details, a really fun bomb bay play feature, solid minifigure selection (excluding the stormtrooper), and nearly 700 pieces for only $60, I can’t recommend this set highly enough.
Read the rest of our reviews of LEGO Star Wars sets from Rogue One here on The Brothers Brick.